Elizabeth Brendel Horn

Bio: Elizabeth Brendel Horn is an academic researcher from University of Central Florida. The author has contributed to research in topics: Economic Justice & Social change. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 8 publications receiving 16 citations.

(Re)Discovering Story and Voice: The Adaptive Community Theatre Project

Abstract: The Adaptive Community Theatre Project (ACTP) at the University of Central Florida (UCF) served to honor the voices and stories of community members with aphasia and other acquired neurocognitive disabilities, while combatting the isolation and depression often felt by this demographic. This paper will explore the ways in which the pilot year programming of ACTP evolved over time, due in part to the primary author’s perceived disinterest of the neuroatypical participants. Though initially the neuroatypical participants expressed interest in the project, erratic rehearsal attendance, transportation issues, cognitive fatigue, and stage fright presented challenges for the participants and created obstacles to the theatre process. This led to multiple modifications, including shifting from an ensemble-based mixed-ability devising model to an ethnographic model, and shifting from a full performance to a staged reading and community discussion. This paper offers an overview of the ACTP and the challenges that led to multiple structural revisions throughout the development of the project. Written from the perspective of the ACTP artistic director, a reflection and analysis on the project’s pilot year concludes with a proposed model for successful community-based theatre work with participants with acquired neurocognitive disabilities and neurotypical volunteers. This paper asks: What are the best practices for creating theatre with/for participants with neurological/neurocognitive deficits? What tensions in objectives, communication, and access arise when a team of neurotypical individuals creates artistic and extracurricular programing for neuroatypical individuals? And how can neurotypical theatre-makers interested in accessibility and inclusion adapt their approach to rise to the challenges presented by these tensions?

“Do you see me?” Power and visibility in applied theatre with black male youth and the police

Abstract: This article accounts the author’s experience as co-facilitator of the pilot program of “The Justice Project,” an applied theatre project in which high school students of color presented an original performance and interactive theatre workshop to police officers to explore the police-civilian dynamic. As a white middle-class female teacher working with male high school students of color, the author’s perceived hypervisibility due to her demographic positioning was shattered during the culminating event of the residency. Held at a police academy, the director of the police academy announced a gang task force officer would be scanning the high school students prior to the workshop. The police academy’s assumed position of power brought to light the hypervisibility of these students due to their gender, race, age, and class. Using Critical Race Feminism Theory, this article deconstructs the shifts in power and visibility that occurred during this conflict; the cultural complexities within these power...

‘Act Out Justice’: reflective collaborative inquiry on theatre for social change youth programming

Abstract: This study outlines and analyzes the effectiveness of a reflective collaborative inquiry model developed for the programmatic and curricular revisions of ‘Act Out Justice’ (AOJ), a theatre for soci...

Three decade drama/theatre and (for/with/by/about) youth crowd-sourced timeline

Abstract: What events, patterns, or people have shaped the field or marked its milestones since Youth Theatre Journal’s (YTJ’s) first issue in 1986? We put the call out to YTJ readers, this rich array of ent...

And so she plays her part: An autoethnographic exploration of body image, consent, and the young actor

Abstract: Through the lens of the author’s experiences as a former young actor, adult TYA practitioner, and individual in recovery for an eating disorder, this autoethnographic exploration weaves together pe...

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Abstract: A sweeping examination of the core issues of sexual politics, bell hook's new book Feminist Theory: from margin to center argues that the contemporary feminist movement must establish a new direction for the 1980s. Continuing the debates surrounding her controversial first book, Ain't I A Woman, bell hooks suggests that feminists have not succeeded in creating a mass movem A sweeping examination of the core issues of sexual politics, bell hook's new book Feminist Theory: from margin to center argues that the contemporary feminist movement must establish a new direction for the 1980s. Continuing the debates surrounding her controversial first book, Ain't I A Woman, bell hooks suggests that feminists have not succeeded in creating a mass movement against sexist oppression because the very foundation of women's liberation has, until now, not accounted for the complexity and diversity of female experience.

Facilitating reflective learning in higher education

Abstract: Facilitating reflective learning in higher education, 2 nd ed., by Anne Brockbank and Ian McGill, Maidenhead, McGraw Hill and Open University Press (Society for Research into Higher Education),2007...

Book Review: Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight

Abstract: America is in the midst of a well-advertised ‘‘obesity epidemic.’’ It appears we have lost our war on obesity. Diets do not work for the vast majority of people, although the diet industry begs to disagree. In fact, dieting promotes weight gain, according to Linda Bacon, PhD. Her answer to the American weight problem ‘‘has nothing to do with dieting or self-denial and everything to do with eating and self-affirmation.’’ Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight is not a weight-loss book, not a diet book, not an exercise program, nor does it contain any recipes. Backed by solid, welldocumented research, Bacon provides the reader with historical background, scientific evidence, and tools to help break free from an obsession with weight, and to see the $50 billion weight-loss industry for what it is—an industry that makes money perpetuating our preoccupation with food and our obsessive fear of becoming fat. Health at Every Size (HAES) is a health movement concept that predates Bacon’s book, and this book is Bacon’s perspective on the HAES movement, whose basic tenants are self-acceptance, physical activity, and normalized eating. The HAES philosophy promotes the concept that a person’s appropriate, healthy weight cannot be determined from a chart or a scale but rather is the weight a person settles into while maintaining a healthy, physical lifestyle including eating according to internally directed signals of hunger, appetite, and satiety. Linda Bacon earned her doctorate in physiology from the University of California, Davis, specializing in weight regulation. She holds graduate degrees in both psychology (specializing in eating disorders and body image) and exercise science (specializing in metabolism) and has professional experience as a researcher, clinical psychotherapist, exercise physiologist, and educator. She is an assistant researcher in the Nutrition Department at the University of California, Davis, and teaches nutrition in the Biology Department at City College of San Francisco. She conducts training for health professionals on the latest research in weight regulation. Reading Bacon’s preface and introduction, one might surmise that the book is the product of years of personal battles with body and weight issues and efforts to make sense of a disconnect between the disciplines she studied with regard to the science of weight regulation, cultural assumptions, and ‘‘expert’’ advice from the health field. The ‘‘surprising truth’’ described in her subtitle reflects her opinion that the public and most health care professionals have been misguided by the media and that commonly believed ‘‘assumptions’’ about ‘‘overweight’’ are not supported by the results of recent research. Our obsession with weight produces ‘‘collateral damage’’ such as eating disorders and an unhealthy association with food. Bacon asserts that our present state of knowledge indicates that a healthy lifestyle (good nutrition and physical fitness) is a better indicator of health than personal weight. Eating whole, healthy foods (as opposed to the myriad more profitable processed food products) and learning to honor our bodies by eating intuitively without the aids of weight loss products do not benefit the weight loss industry and, therefore, are downplayed in the media. This book covers a lot of territory: the politics of the food industry, the science of weight regulation, taste engineering, the psychology of our relationship with food, cultural influences, the physiologic and genetic influences on how much we will weigh, and the effects ‘‘fast food’’ and highly processed foods have on weight regulation. A large portion of the book is spent busting the assumed health risks for the ‘‘overweight.’’ Although Bacon does not deny the health risks associated with ‘‘obese’’ individuals with body mass index (BMI) more than 35, she states that scientific research indicates the risks for those labeled ‘‘overweight’’ with BMI 25 to 30 are grossly exaggerated and that the efforts taken to achieve ‘‘ideal’’ weight (eg, yo-yo dieting, extremely low calorie diets, weight-loss drugs) have resulted in health risks independent of body weight. Included in the appendix are form letters intended to aid those choosing to follow the HAES concept, such as ‘‘Friends and Family: How You Can Best Support Me in Good Health,’’ and form messages for various audiences explaining the need to switch the public’s focus to health and well-being as opposed to weight. Also included is an extensive resource guide. Written in a style equally accessible to the general public and health care professionals, Bacon provides information on health and weight regulation that is not well publicized. In support of her position, Bacon includes 437 references. Embracing a commonsense approach to weight regulation, the HAES concept has become a movement gaining attention. This book is a timely and long-overdue must-read not just for dieters but also for health care professionals who give advice about weight loss.

“Fear of what we don’t know”: Grappling with diversity in a youth theatre program

Abstract: This article examines how youth participants in a community-based theatre program confronted and grappled with issues of diversity and difference while rehearsing and performing a play about Ruby B...

Casting youth/Developing identity: Casting and racial and ethnic identity development

Abstract: This essay explores how casting in youth-based applied theatre coincides with an important period of racial and ethnic identity development for adolescents and young adults. Using theory from devel...